The Witches of Karres
Ratings6
Average rating4.2
NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED . . . Captain Pausert thought his luck had finally turned¾but he did not yet realize it was a turn for the worse. On second thought, make that a turn for the disastrous*. Unlucky in love, unsuccessful in business, he thought he had finally made good with his battered starship Venture, cruising around the fringes of the Empire and successfully selling off odd-ball cargoes which no one else had been able to sell. He was all set to return home, where his true love was faithfully waiting for him ... he hoped. But then he made the fatal mistake of freeing three slave children from their masters (who were suspiciously eager to part with them). They were just trying to be helpful, but those three adorable little girls quickly made Pausert the mortal enemy of his fiancee, his home planet, the Empire, warlike Sirians, psychopathic Uldanians, the dread pirate chieftain Laes Yango¾and even the Worm World, the darkest threat to mankind in all of space. And all because those harmless-looking little girls were in fact three of the notorious and universally feared Witches of Karres. A rollicking novel from the master of space adventure. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
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4 primary booksThe Witches of Karres
The Witches of Karres is a 4-book series with 4 primary works first released in 1966 with contributions by James H. Schmitz, Eric Flint, and Dave Freer.
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This is based on a novelette written in 1949, which takes up the first two chapters of the book; I read it on its own in my youth and was fond of it. In 1966 the author decided to extend it into a novel, which I discovered later. The novel doesn't quite maintain the charm of the novelette, but it's an acceptable continuation, and readable enough, though none of it is meant to be taken seriously.
The whole thing is a strange mixture of sf and fantasy, spaceships and magic, plus magic-using children as active participants in the plot. There's something rather childish about it. But it makes a pleasant easy read if you have no objection to old-style sf/fantasy with a touch of childishness.
After the initial novelette, in which the young spaceship-piloting Pausert meets three child witches of Karres, the rest of the novel describes his adventures roaming the galaxy in the company of one of them: his magically-talented nine-year-old first cousin once removed, who has already declared her intention of marrying him. A modern author might be nervous about using such a pair as his lead characters, but Schmitz was born in 1911 and handles the situation with casual innocence.
